The present invention is directed to a door support assembly that raises and lowers a door for installation and removal in a series of discrete, measurable steps while providing lateral and vertical stability.
The inventor of the present invention has worked in the door installation industry most of his life. The doors he usually deals with encompass an opening and closing structure used to block off an entrance, typically consisting of an interior side that faces the inside of a space and an exterior side that faces the outside of that space.
The inventor recognized that most doors are hinged along one side to allow the door to pivot away from the doorway in one direction but not in the other. The axis of rotation is usually vertical. In some cases, such as hinged garage doors, the axis may be horizontal, above the door opening. These doors typically position inside a door frame, and hinge between the interior and exterior space to open and close, respectively. A door frame hinge aligns with the door hinge to allow a pin to pass through. The pin secures the two hinges together, thereby installing the door.
Typically, installation or removal of the door required the inventor to lift the door from the door hinge on one side of the door frame. This lifting often required an additional person to help, due to the weight of the door, and stability required to remove the pin from the hinges. This excessive labor often resulted in back pain, and damaged door frames.
The above realizations caused him to first create a vertical support structure that moved up and down to raise and lower the door. A door brace attached to the bottom of the vertical support structure to slide underneath the door. Yet, the doors were still too heavy to raise. So the inventor recognized that a simple machine to magnify the lifting force, such as a ratchet would facilitate the lifting and lowering of the door. The ratchet also allowed for measurable, successive steps to lift and lower the door.
Through additional trial and error, the assembly was still imperfect because the door would slide off the vertical support structure. The inventor recognized that attaching straps around the door and at the door periphery, which could be tightened with a ratchet, would stabilize the lateral direction of the door.
After using the assembly with these novel changes, the inventor noticed that the top of the door would scrape against a lateral bar he had attached for additional lateral stability. The inventor finally added a pair of rollers on the lateral bar to help diminish the effects of friction as the door was raised and lowered.
In the past, door support assemblies have been used to raise and lower doors from their hinges. The inventor of this present invention believes that a door support assembly configured to his specifications has helped stabilize, measure, and facilitate the raising and lowering of doors for installation and removal. This was an unexpected result.
A door support assembly has been used for raising and lowering doors in the past, yet none with the present characteristics of the present invention. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,141,192; 4,492,369; 5,814,842; 8,220,780; and 4,620,828.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a door support assembly that raises and lowers a. door for installation and removal in a. series of discrete, measurable steps while providing lateral and vertical stability.